Interview (Part One) with Kent A. Carlson, Vietnam veteran. CCSU Veterans History Project

now I know you went on a later destroy the National Guard what was your highest rank in the National Guard I served as a sergeant major in the Connecticut Army National Guard during the Vietnam War what General locations did you serve I during the Vietnam who are I served in Vietnam all over the place I was basically in Danang I was in Pleiku I was in Bambi tuit and I was in Queen Anne for the most part but because I was on a helicopter crew I got to see Vietnam from Saigon all the way up including the DMZ and I got to see from the South China Sea over to the other side of the country into Laos and Cambodia on some missions I didn't know where the land line was but I think I'm pretty sure we were there yes so I got to see an awful lot of the country and I was fortunate enough being attached to a helicopter company that was working with the advisory group so I got to go to the villages actually landing villages I got to meet some of the people and I got to see an awful lot of what the people were liking and what the country was like it's funny you should ask that because I volunteered to be drafted can you explain that I was 18 years of age and I knew that I wanted to get my military service over with but I didn't want to enlist for three years in case I didn't like it so you had an option of going down to the draft board and saying take me and they were more than happy to do so so they did take me and in November of 1965 I reported for basic training at the reception station in Fort Dix New Jersey I stayed at Fort Dix for two full weeks and I was wondering what was going on because usually you were sent to a you within a week but they took a whole bunch of us that came from Connecticut and I was drafted mostly with people from Hartford and the area surrounding areas and a lot of more older than me and they decided to send us to Fort Hood Texas because they were going to start basic training there they had never done basic training there and so they sent us back to Fort Hood Texas and we were all excited because we thought it was going to be nice and warm and it got hot alright and it was my first airplane ride and so I flew to Fort Hood Texas and I completed basic training there and when I finished basic training they decided that they want to make me a armor crewman so they sent me to training there where at Fort Hood Texas they were going to train me right there as an armor crewman and the opportunity came up for me to go into the infantry which I really thought would be better suited for me so I told them I wanted to be in the infantry so they obliged me and they sent me off to advanced individual training in the infantry when I completed my training they were going to send me to Germany and I didn't want to go to Germany because I knew that the infantry in Germany spent a lot of time laying around the snow I didn't want to do that my younger brother was in the army and his unit had been assigned to Vietnam so I said I'll go to Vietnam and if things get too hot for him he can come home figuring I'm the big brother that I should be able to do that well we're both stubborn so neither one of us came home so my mother had two sons in Vietnam at the same time he was in the 196th Light Infantry Brigade and he served as a radio communications guy and their basic came in which I didn't know where it was I got to Vietnam I thought I was going to be in the infantry they said no you're gonna be in the aviation unit I didn't know what they wanted with an infantry in aviation unit because I couldn't fix helicopters and they said no you're going to be a door gunner on a helicopter Kent before you tell us all about the Vietnam portion let's go back and talk about all your basic training leading up to it when you went to Fort Hood in Texas your initial basic training how long was that that was eight weeks can you describe what that was like it wasn't hard at all because if you I learned very early to keep my mouth shut and not volunteer for anything and we had people that were drafted there that didn't want to be there in the worst way they didn't want to be there I had people in my unit they were deliberately flunking the tests so they'd get sent home these were college students so they figured if they didn't pass their weekly test that they gave them that they could you know get discharged from the Army written test we're talking about athletes and I'm not going to mention his name but one of them was very smart you know he was in the barracks lawyer knew his way around the figgety so what happened was our platoon sergeant sergeant Smith had me sitting next to him and he didn't tell him to cheat but he told him had he he had a wide field of vision on the test and he would not accept the guys flunking the tests he says I know you know what the answers are and I got a feeling that even if you put the wrong answer that he changed the answers for him after the test returning so this guy did end up you know completing basic training we had one guy in our unit that couldn't pass any of the physical stuff but they found out he was a graduate of the American Culinary Institute and he did end up graduating and then he went straight over to the generals house to work as a cook on the base so he was he ended up pretty good what kind of things they trained us in hand-to-hand combat basic rifle marksmanship you know marching physical training I was in the best physical shape of my life when I completed my training before I went to Vietnam I mean I was really in good shape I put I was a skinny kid and I put on like 30 pounds of muscle so I was really good shape then we had a graduation but you know it was down in Texas so very few parents you know back in 65 actually was 66 by then very few people would fly down for the graduation ceremony no did you go immediately from that into the armored crew training program yes yes ain't it I was only I was only there for four weeks we were on a self-propelled howitzer so eventually I would have learned how to drive the tits like a tank and I would have learned to drive it but I got out of that time because I wasn't really fond of it you're in them something that's metal and you're inside and you're bouncing all around because it was no shock absorbers to speak up and if you weren't careful you can get hurt inside the tank and in fact one of our the crews that was out there they didn't strap down the shells that they're gonna be firing and they hit a tree and the shell went flying and broke a couple guys feet so and then when they fired this thing the whole back of the thing filled up with smoke you know I mean really heavy smoke so I I didn't really like that at all and I figured you know I had a better chance on the ground in the infantry so so you requested to go to the yes yes yes where'd you do your attic I went to Fort Jackson South Carolina how was that that was another nine weeks of training and there we learned infantry patrolling and we learned different kinds of weapons and it was during the the build up of Fort Jackson for infantry training and things like that so they put us in a separate area of the post a whole bunch of us they sent up there and we were not on the main post we were off kind of to the side which was good because our instructors left at night and we were pretty much on our honor system and that was a mistake so you were allowed to have vehicles at AIT at that time and this was our AIT training and one of the guys had a little Volkswagen that he brought there and so on the weekends if the drill instructors weren't around we'd go down to Myrtle Beach in his car and then a couple times during the week we snuck downtown into Columbia South Carolina and we we went to you know coffee houses bars place like that so it was it was pretty good and then we'd sneak back in at night and that was that was different and some of the guys got mad because we weren't very quiet when we came back and 11 o'clock at night but we did it was your key training mostly in the field kind of work or in the classroom no it was it was probably like 75% in the field you know the trainee a lot of patrolling a lot of camouflage cover and concealment a lot of attacking overlays stuff like that when you volunteered to be drafted why did you choose the army why did you not choose another branch I had gone to Navy recruiter a long time earlier and they said they wanted to put me on a submarine because they said you know you've got the aptitude I didn't know how they knew that already but they want to put me on a submarine and I didn't want it because I thought I'd get claustrophobic I didn't want to go to the Air Force because my brother had been in the Air Force one of my brothers had been in the Air Force and I wanted to be in the army my oldest brother had been in the army and a good family friend had been in the army and I I just thought that was you know more opportunity for me after so when you finished your training at Fort Jackson in South Carolina did you get to the home before you went overseas yes so how long did you get like a two-week leave or something yeah okay I got two weeks leave came home so our everybody you know showed off my new musculature and had a good time you know with all my friends that were there did you know no no I never got the they told me they were going to send me there cuz when you were finishing your training they asked you you filled out an you know dream sheet you know where you wanted to go and they said no your your brother's in Vietnam so you can't go and I said well yeah I do want to go so I already knew I was going I had orders before I came home that I was going to be enough well she she really couldn't say much cuz it the diamond casts and she knew I was stubborn you know she was stubborn my brother stubborn I'm stubborn yes when when well we went went to California okay to the Oakland terminal and we stayed there for a couple days waiting for a flight over so we flew from there and the day that I shipped out every day you're there waiting for orders for to get that a plane and they put you in details you know picking up trash and stuff like that cutting the grass painting rocks in California so I found out that if you've got Gabe blood you didn't have to do a detail so I volunteered to give blood that day and I came back and they said you're shipping out today the joke was on me did you go on a commercial plane we went on a commercial flight and we yeah individual I was an individual replacement so I was not part of a unit and we flew up to Alaska and then we flew to Japan and then we flew right into time to the airbase was your first impression tonight I was absolutely astounded because I was being dumped in the middle of a third world country you know I'd seen things on TV but I never never experienced it myself you know watching people on the side of the road you know just dropping their drawers and take a dump in a ditch and stuff like that and all the people wearing those little black pajamas with a conical hats on and water buffalos and over lighted overloaded sick loaves so it was it was different as a cultural shock and they put us on a bus and the bus had fencing over the windows so people couldn't throw grenades in there so I said you know what have you gotten yourself into and that's kind of the way it went so the next thing you know I went the next day I landed there spent the night there and then I went up to Queenie on and I flew up there on a cargo plane and then I flew on a helicopter from there to Danae and then I flew on another helicopter you know all within a couple days down to Pleiku and when I arrived and pleiku it was a Sunday and they were having a party so I said this is not a bad place to be they were actually having a cookout and beer and everything so I into pleco and I said this is a unit 2b and then they said well you're not going to stay here you're gonna go down to Bambi tuit and I got down there and I arrived at the Mack feat compound and I said you know this is this is women you know it's really not bad I had a bunk a real bump that's where I was going to be stationed nice yes I did because when I was up and denied going back to when I first got to tonight they said you're here because you're gonna be a door gunner and I says well I don't know what it's all about they said well we need infantry people because you're probably pretty good with a gun and some of our mechanics aren't good in fact they've been shooting holes in the skids of the helicopters because we had free guns on the helicopters there was nothing to control where you shot with that thing so you could follow the target with your machine gun right into the pilot and in fact one of our Gunners actually shot the pilot in the foot as it was flying the helicopter so they wanted to get a few people that probably knew what they were doing and then I would be the one who had to clean the weapons afterwards because the mechanics would be working on the helicopter so this way here they were killing two birds with one song so I got to do the weapons they got to do the helicopter I wasn't thrilled at all because I knew that the life expectancy of a door gunner was very very short and you were target up there and they says well yeah it's got its benefits though you know if you live it's a clean life for the most part you're not out in the swamp there's no bungy sticks or stuff like that to worry about and so okay I'll try it well then they took me up unbeknownst to me and they say we're gonna go for a flight to make sure you don't get airsick or anything I had been for a ride coming up from Queenie on that would hit never had any training so they all had headsets on and all of a sudden I hear the engine stop and I'm panicking and I'm shaking the guy next to me and they're just laughing and we get to the ground and I says what you know why are you guys laughing this is because you are scared and I said well yeah of course what happened they say well we were practicing an auto rotation which is if you get shot if your aircraft gets shot and you lose your engine you got to learn how to land and a helicopter blade keeps going around so it'll slow you down and you have to practice that because in case you actually ever needed it which apparently happened quite a bit and because I did not throw up or anything like that they said you're gonna probably make a pretty good gun so I said okay you know not like I had a lot of choice at this stage of the game I've already volunteered to go over there so they sent me down and the first helicopter I served on was actually a slick which was a D model which was used mostly for transporting people and carbon and I found out when we got down to Bambi tuit that we were going to be supporting the 23rd urban division and Danny Tillett was the capital of dar LOC province so it was a you know the provincial headquarters for there so we ended up flying all around in support of the 23rd ironmans and all the special forces units that were in the area we would fly in there supplies for them fly people out we would do medevacs cargo just about everything now we got there I got there and I was there for Thanksgiving and I was there for Christmas this was in 1966 so on New Year's Eve they were supposedly you know it's some kind of a ceasefire going and we had a big party at the club in the compound and Bambi tuit and most of us had too much to drink obviously so the next morning we're sleeping I get wake woken up and they said we have to fly some emergency supplies nice look what's gone no you gotta fly somewhere in sea supplies to the Special Forces camp and I have to know I wonder what happened you know maybe they got hit last night and overrun so we had to fly and with a hangover it was it was bad flying through the mountains you're going up and down because we're in the central islands so we're going through the mountains and you know it really feels not so good we land down in the Train and we pull up next to this pallet that's covered with a tarp so it won't get dust in it and they uncover it and it was beer they ran out of beer I was so unhappy to say the least so we had to fly them back a helicopter full of beer because they ran out of beer and they couldn't celebrate without beer so needless to say I wasn't happy with the Special Forces guys at that time when you first arrived did they assign you to a specific crew that you stayed with or did you always fly with different people no we only had two ships down at the macd compound okay we had two aircraft that were there on a per from semi-permanent basis now when one of them went back from maintenance back up to pleiku they would send another ship down or so we always had at least two aircraft there and we were very very busy I mean we we do a lot of things there I got found out that you could go downtown because it was a relatively safe town so a couple times I did go downtown and to Bambi tuit at night I ate downtown I ate the local food I drank the local beer which is pretty good I found out there was an orphanage in town from the chaplain that was there and he said you know he actually brought me out to the orphanage and I hooked up with my church at home to send school supplies to the orphanage so they did that in fact I had pictures of me when I was in the orphanage visiting and they sent a whole bunch of stuff from my church at home what can you tell me about the aircraft the actual aircraft and its capabilities it was the most dependent the Huey helicopter was most dependable aircraft in the world as far as I was concerned and the thing that was all mechanical was an electrical so much like the new helicopters are so you didn't have the failures that you can have because of heat or sand or things like that now they weren't perfect but they were darn good and we could lift an awful lot and the pilots that we had a lot of who were very young and they were very very good I mean it's they were like Naturals and they know exactly how much cargo they could fit in them and how many passengers and at one time we had to fly some children to a Special Forces camp where they were having a Christmas party for him and I think we had 16 children in the helicopter hey two kids on my lap and I hear him the gunner and I got two kids sitting in my lap when we we packed that thing up and the pilots knew exactly how much with the amount of fuel they had and the temperature how fab you know how many people they could stack in there at one time so it was great and we did an awful lot of just about everything we flew people we flew combat assault when we bring people into an area where they go out looking for the bad guys we did resupply there was an argument unit me that went out looking for the enemy supposedly and they went into the woods and they got themselves stuck they didn't have a fuel they didn't have any water so we had to lower on a rope we had to lower down chainsaws so they could cut an LZ for us so we can bring him in fuel and water you know it was really really stupid on their part but because you were the gunner did you have to know anything at all about maintenance of the aircraft no so you all you had to worry about was I had to worry all I had to worry about was the guns working and not just my gun but the crew chiefs gun and when I later on when I was on a gunship I had the external guns and the Rockets that I had to be carrying you know work with all right what can you tell me about the guns that you use the guns that we use on a Huey where there's 7.62 m60 machine guns our personal weapon at that time we were all issued as crew members we were issued a 45 and so what we would do is we we had a 45 and I bought a Western holster western style said the army style because I liked it it looked cool and I used to slide the western-style holster I'd slide the pistol down and put it in my crotch area to protect me there and they gave us an armor plate and you were supposed to wear that as a chest protector well we also had a flak vest one of our friends got hit in the chest plate and it shattered the bullet shattered and he got him in his fingers and messed up his fingers pretty good so that made me think twice about doing that and then I'm one mission later on when I was on a gunship I I took a round right up from the bottom of the aircraft into the ammunition troops for the external guns and it sent some shrapnel up and but and then the gun wouldn't work and so the pilot who screamed the gun wouldn't work well it wasn't gonna work because it wasn't round had been right up at me so after that I sat on my armor plate I didn't want to take any chances because that's that's how you're going to get killed and when the pilot saw what had happened you know he he wasn't so mad and either one of the guns was working because the other gun had been hit by around when the guy was shooting at me too so he was mad that the guns were working I said hey look the guns might have been working but it wouldn't have been me working so we took a lot of rounds it was the 7.62 machine that was at the typical gun used on the Huey's yes yeah where were you trained in the use of that I was trained near that with the infantry training at Fort Jackson so you I knew that gun inside out what's your opinion fantastic weapon absolutely fantastic now remember that at that time the the army rifle when I went through basic training was the m14 which was also 7.62 millimeter the NATO round standard narrow but the machine gun was a great great great machine gun did you fly with the same crew you're talking about that were you always with the same crew when you went out no no if it was the same group of people okay because they were in your platoon whoever you were flying with at that particular time and because I was a gunner I got to fly more than the crew chiefs did because they had to go in with their aircraft for maintenance so I would go to a different ship so how often would you actually fly almost every day almost every single day the typical day we'd get a get up around 6 o'clock and we'd have breakfast and we'd go out to the aircraft and find out where we were going that day whatever we've been assigned to do for that particular day what area we were supporting that day and you never knew what it was gonna be might be ok we're gonna fly this guy down here or we're gonna fly these people there or we're gonna pick up these supplies and transfer there and a lot of times because we were in the advisory group we'd fly the army advisor around okay and we went out to a lot of the remote villages in dar LOC provinces and he'd meet with the local reactionary force soldiers that were there and one time we had to fly our advisor down to Saigon to meet with the big guys down there general Westmoreland was down there so we had to go down to Saigon well we went down late in the day and when we landed you couldn't go downtown into Saigon at night so they said well you're gonna find a bunk place to sleep so I went down to the charge of Quarter CQ which is a duty at all and co spoke see if I could use this month that night and he couldn't know kind of outta luck but I went down to see the CTO and it turns out there was some day I went to high school with that I knew all the way on the other side of the world all the way in the other side of the world so I ran across it was Jimmy Hutchinson and Jimmy was over there in an aviation unit also and we spent most of the night talking but I finally did get some sleep in and then turns out a long time later after this after I met my wife my wife had gone out with Jimmy Hutchinson once or twice now what town were you and Jimmy Hutchinson from Manchester Connecticut yeah well next door I'm in South wins an album and my wife was a resident of Manchester and she graduated the year after me and she had sat in the homeroom with my brother in school but we never knew each other in high school it's probably a good thing I wouldn't have dated me all right so what'd you find out where you were going for the day you take off typically how long was the mission typically we fly for a couple hours and then we you know we'd fly back and usually we'd come back around five o'clock at night have supper and then do our thing and that's the way it was it was it was a job function in the morning punch out you know the only difference was occasionally somebody would take a few shots at you you shoot back there can you recall specifically any one time we had to fly and they told us to leave our wallets behind and they marked over the US Army on the side of the helicopter and the shady-looking civilian guys I'm assuming they were CIA told us that we were going to be heading west don't worry about nothing and we had to fly them to meet somebody on the other side of the border the Cambodian border so we just kept her mouth shut we weren't exactly nuts about the idea because we were flying and we had to be escorted by gunships we were on a slip at the time so we had to be escorted by gunships over there so we know we're heading into Indian country and we brought him there he spent some time talking one don't know what they said obviously and then we flew back and everything was back to normal so that was different another time we flew out into a very remote village and they were using the first time I'd seen it they were using elephants as beasts of burden because they were hauling listen this wood it was you know way out in the highlands and this little RF soldier comes up spewing away in French and our pilot at the time captain Jose spoke French so he started chatting with a guy he turns out the guy had been in the French Foreign Legion he had served with the Foreign Legion which is a pretty cool thing but I never seen the elephants being used like that they had a mall training they have a lot of elephants every you have to understand that that place was they had beautiful beaches they had you know very tons and tons of monkeys you know you fly low over the tree sometime you hear the monkeys screaming at you over the roar of the helicopter you can hear that monkey screaming because there were so many of them there and it was just an absolutely beautiful country and we went to some places and we wouldn't land on a mountain yard village and the men actually wore a loincloth and they hunted with crossbows yeah and they'd be wrapped in a big heavy blanket and I'd be sitting on the side you know I sit in the helicopter with my hands on the gun because I didn't know what he had underneath that blanket they kept my eyes open you know real peeled sharp is if he pulled a lot of guns and decide to you know shoot somebody I wasn't gonna ask any questions he's gonna die because it wasn't gonna be me no that was captain Hosie can you smell that HOSA did you have a specific territory of range that your helicopters had to cover or did you go everywhere no we we had a specific area we were in to court Vietnam was divided up into four cores and we were in to court so you could go anywhere in the second court we would go anywhere in the second quarter that they need us yes so we were in support of the military assistance command advisors for two Corps did you ever have to stay overnight in other places or were you home at your own base every night well I was in Bambi tuit except for that night in Saigon I was home every night we were back in Bambi tuit at night how long did you stay I was there until February when they decided to reorganize that February 67 they decided that they were going to pull all of our units together because we had had we other parts of our company we're up an I Corps and parts of it were in three Corps they decided they're gonna put the whole company together up in Danang and up in Danang we were going to be a Salt Company which meant that we were have two platoons of support helicopters and want the two them attack helicopters and so we got up there and I found out I was gonna be on the attack helicopter which I thought was pretty neat cuz but then I realized it was more guns to clean so yeah with a good came the bad but we were the two 82nd aviation company and we are the blackcats damnit I was a black cat when I got up to Danang I became an alley cat because that was the gunship but til notes were call signs I didn't have one I just think I'm just pilots with you it's not like in the Air Force or nothing like that nothing fancy alright so when you went to Danang in February of 67 they assigned you to was still a Huey it was a Huey it was an older model Huey it was a B model Healey which was yeah first you H 1 was the first Huey in the uh-1 a b c and d he became the stretch top version which was used for cargo the B model was an older version of the Huey it didn't have his long body ok looking more like a Polliwog and the guns on this were the very first set of guns that they've done for the helicopter because he were m60 machine guns and they were operated by hydraulics so underneath the backseat of the helicopter was all the ammunition in these long bins and then they had little metal aluminum chutes that went underneath the seats out to the guns on the outside and on the outside there was an external motor that would drive the ammunition you know pull the ammunition forward into the gun itself and they they were controlled by the hi so the pilot who is the gunner had four machine guns that he would turn his handle and he could control what he was shooting at so he when he pulled the trigger and his four guns going off not one now he also had a neat sight he had rockets and he could fire no there were seven two point seven five minutes rockets they were in little pods underneath and he had fourteen of those seven on each side so the pilots could have had a lot of firepower in the hint and now you top that off with I had a free gun and the crew chief had a free gun which was a machine gun m60 machine gun again and it was hanging by a bungee cord from the ceiling of the helicopter and I could shoot anywhere I wanted in fact that's kind of what happened when a few of the guys got a little trigger-happy and they followed the target and they'd shoot a hole in the skin and one of the guys like I said shot the pilot in the foot didn't go over too big not a smart thing but those were the very first gun ships now right after that they started coming out with Cobras they didn't have any Cobras when I was there so you never flew in a Cobra and the thing you wouldn't because it's only two pilots in there it was just two men crewing so we'd go out and if the pilot expended all the ammunition which they kind of did a lot of we had to go back and reload all the ammunition and that was a my job because I was the gunner how big was the crew that flew into Huey's there's four members of the crewmen so you eat when you were a baby till abandoning it was always for then was always for right the gunner in the crew chief and the crew chief would be the additional gunner on the other side and our job was to protect the flank of the helicopter and down below you know so we'd be looking for other things you know as you're flying and you're taking off you'd say you know you clear left clear right all that stuff and you'd be looking and if there was something in the out that you saw you let the pilot know exactly what you saw and he wants you to you know if somebody was shooting at you he'd want you to spot him for things like that and sometimes that was interesting Vista funniest story was we're in the gungeon now they're heavy because I've had 10,000 rounds of 7.62 ammunition for the pilots alone and I've got another 2,400 rounds for myself and for the crew chiefs that stitch 1,200 rounds apiece that's a lot of weight and then you put the Rockets on that so we're flying relatively low and this old man don't know who he was don't know why in the middle of a rice field stands up and takes one shot at the helicopter now he misses but the pilot mr. Easley restless soul is mad and he's taking it personal now it wasn't personal you get guy who just shooting at us and he says nobody shoots this guy but me listen okay so we figure he's gonna shoot him with the guns mr. Easley pulls out his 45 and he sticks his hand out the window of the helicopter and he's shooting that this guy no yeah the chances of him hitting them no net he didn't have a chance again but I'm just laughing that was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life we left him a livelihood and we harassed him afterwards but mr. mr. Easley was really cool he knew he'd been enlisted guy for a long time he was a really good guy he used to play his guitar and sing cowboy songs and stuff like that when we get back to a post and then he was he was something else the Huey first as a cargo helicopter and then you flew the gunship version which did you prefer two completely different missions what kind of missions would you go on I liked the gunship okay because you knew when you're going out there you were gonna get in trouble you really knew there was gonna be some kind of something going on and no matter what you were doing there'd be something going on so one incident in particular in June of 1967 we were flying tomboy escort there was a military convoy heading north Upton - towards the DMZ towards wave flew by because we used to go up to that area Don highway flew by and I saw something that didn't look normal you know it's just some something caught my eye and I told the pilot says I saw something in that tree line over there that didn't you know look like it should have been there and he said what was it I said it looked like something blue you know bright blue and I said you don't expect to see that in a jungle area or in a rice paddy you know you know these people were blasted things like that well as it turns out we we took a swing over there and the thing that blew ended up to be a North Vietnamese company that had infiltrated from the north and so here we were we were like 40 miles south of the DMZ and these guys made the mistake I started shooting at us instead of hiding so we ended up engaging them and we called them two more gunships so we had four gunships on site and we spent the next three hours in a locked battle with these guys and the ship's got we got our ships got shot up but we didn't get shot up at all so it was a very bad mistake but this is put in context this is in June of 1967 so the Tet Offensive took place in January of 68 they were infiltrating soldiers a long time before that but that's the first time we'd ever run across North Vietnamese regulars it wasn't the last because we ran across a small group at a later time and we caught them and you know killing them all typically you would fly to good ships we always you'd always fly to vengeance and sometimes stupid as it sounds if you got bored you could go out looking to find out where the bad guys were so you'd have one helicopter flying real low to the ground low and slow and the other helicopter would be up high so they couldn't see and as soon as the lower guy took around somebody started shooting them they need pounced on so we used to do that and you take turns being the low guy I'd like to be in the high diamond then then they decided that because me Vietcong were infiltrating so much that they want us to go out at night we we built something called a a Firefly and what they did was we took the seven c-130 landing lights and hooked it up on a like a spotlight so we would go out at night and check the river and we also tried hooking up a 50 caliber machine gun and we made a special mount for you know me well didn't we put in one of the helicopters so we'd go out at night looking for this boats that were on the river it was up by Danang was near near Who I am which was south of there and that's another story but we go down to the river and we could catch the boats in there and they'd start shooting at us and we had the spotlight so they're basically almost blinded and we took out that machine-gun the 50 caliber one night only because it almost ripped the helicopter apart because it was such a heavy weapon and it was like shooting basketballs in so it was and I had pictures of that too but it was it was something else well what turns out after that we didn't use the 50 caliber anymore we just choose regular gunships but we started getting tired because we were going up every night when we go out we rearm we shoot then they'd expect us to fly our missions during day and we finally come to look we can't do this every night so they stopped doing it it's not because it was a target-rich environment but we just couldn't do it and after so many hours helicopters had going for maintenance we're eating up our hours so we wouldn't have helicopters ready if there was a big mission during the day so we stopped but what we didn't know was there was a big mountain in Hoi An that had been hollowed out with caves and tunnels it was a Vietnamese hospital it was an NVA hospital we didn't know it until after the war Wow well you were the baby to it you said you flew almost every day was that the same case when you were up and tonight did you fly almost every day almost every day almost everything no and the reason I don't is because when I was moved just before the end of my time in Vietnam they sent me down to battalion headquarters you know the 17th group headquarters and they put me on perimeter do me down and I never got the remaining air medals that I was supposed to get so you were so let's get near metal for every 50 hours of combat support or for 25 hours of combat assault and last one I got was back in February I believe February I had seven air medals already so I flown over you know like 300 hours and something but I was flying almost every day I'd say it's flying 25 hours a week so I probably if it counted you know you really want to know how many air medals it was a hell block but they didn't just keep all those records so what was your typical mission when you are Danae was was there a typical mission was it this besides going out to try to do the high-low thing and finding enemy was where he was trying to a specific action or was it just no we thoose what it was whatever they wanted you to do now if they were going to do a combat assault again if there was going to be some people assaulting a village you know I'm the supposedly the goods guys if they were going to go out there they'd bring them in on the slicks but before they went in with a selection we'd be following cover over them and for the convoys we would be flying cover for convoys in case they got ambushed we would be there to protect them and extractions if they you know somebody got trapped and they had to be pulled out we would be going in attacking them and that's that's what happened with there was a Marine czar in that area too and some Marines got stuck we saw they were on a small mountain then we saw that they were being attacked on all sites so we we tried to reach their headquarters and we were shooting at all the NVA around them and we kept aircraft on stations until the Marines could actually send it a transport helicopter to pull them out cuz we didn't have any transports all we had was the gunships and we we'd seen this by accident you know is another kind of thing you see something also you see the bad guys and and another time there was means and we were flying in support of that area but not to support the Marines and we saw the Marines were heading into a trap there was an ambush at work so we went into attack mode and when we were shooting our brass was coming down you know the hot brass from the guns was coming down hitting the Marines I they think they might have thought we were shooting at them but we were actually shooting right in front of them at the NVA that were in front and we couldn't reach him on the phones or the radios because you know the communications were terrible between between the arm between the Army and the it's absolutely terrible there's no communication between couldn't talk to him on the ground warned him the only way we could warn him is going in and attacking which we did and then we we flew up to dawn high which was a Marine base which was got absolutely pounded all the time and they wanted us we had to land our helicopter and spend the night there so they said well we want you to you know sleep up there here in this bunker and we said no we're gonna sleep there's this very very small bunker right next to the aircraft and it says if somebody starts you know firing at didn't you guys at night which is typically what happened we says we want to be in our aircraft so we can take off and that night they got rocketed and the rockets hit the guest bunker not ours so yeah and they hit the hospital and then they had the other place so it was a good move on our part but they also damaged one or two of the aircraft but it was something else no baby to it you only had two helicopters on site how many the rest of the company was there so there was 24 aircraft facility yes yes we were in a very small small place with babies I mean with a landing strip basically and it was nothing big good land there how long did you stay at today I stayed there until late July early August 767 I went down to Queen yarn to battalion headquarters and that was because you're a short-timer now I was a short-timer and they needed people on security for the main base it was a huge facility but it was also in a you know vulnerable spot so they realize this in Queen yon you hear you've been flying in helicopters the whole time you were saying I'm not able to put you on the ground mounted that square with you not well but I know why they did it you know or I thought I knew why I never will know for sure but they sent me down there and they put me on guard duty at night and I guess they needed some experienced people because most of the people that were down there had never you know they just came into the country and some of them got trigger-happy in the middle of the night you know and like like one guy he just started shooting in the middle of the night and so they took him off they sent some doctors because they said he was you know anxious so then they put him back on he started shooting again and then he was off for a couple more days third time they did it they sent him back home so he was crazy like a fox and some of the other people we had there were you know they were recovering from I don't know what you know we had we had some serious alcoholics there you know trying to drink their way out of the army like what did you have to do I served in a bunker was all around the post then there was guard stations every so many feet I don't know how many feet it was and there was one American soldier there and one Korean soldier because there was a tiger division that they Korean tiger division their headquarters was in cleany and also so was me and a Korean would be there and we'd spend the night looking out you know outside during the day I've slept and I actually a couple times I went downtown to Queeny on I was able to catch the bus down to the down to the beach doesn't sound like a war does it going to the beach yeah life is it be nighttime you scary cuz you know if you you don't know what's coming and they could come right up to the little ravine there was a ravine near the main gate and that was not good did I have incidence no but it I was not a good person to be with in the dark for a long long time after I came home because he start when you're staring out there is absolute pitch black and you know that there's ways and if you don't catch them fast they're gonna they're gonna get you because they were very good at it so it gave me a lot to live bad nightmares when did you leave when young was that your last that was it then I went down back down to Ben one time somebody airbase and waited for a plane home yep it was October October 1967 flew back flew to Fort to Fort Lewis Washington and less than 24 hours later I was on a plane back to Hartford Connecticut and I'm gonna ask you so before we go on to your future career after Vietnam first of all did you get me I know you did medals or citations I know you did do we call them off yeah I don't remember what he got them all for but I do remember we were when I was in Bambi tuit we worked with the 23rd Armond division and we had extracted some soldiers which is pulling them out of a hot LZ and I got the Vietnamese gallantry cross with Bronze Star device on that and that was pinned on me by Colonel on who is the division commander of the Arvin division hey yeah real hard he liked me what other medals or citations I had the air Mel yeah my the Air Medal with numeral six on it from Vietnam and of course I got the Vietnam campaign Vietnam ribbon service ribbon then I have the year crewmen's badge combat infantry badge because we worked as advisors named tree unit and I was assigned to the infantry so therefore I got the comment infantry badge well medals and citations that can't receive to his record Kent did you receive any injuries while you were in Vietnam the only injury I had was a time when I picked up a little piece of shrapnel and I didn't know it at the time and I've still got that where the trap was on the bottom of my leg near my buttocks tiny little piece of aluminum is in me it was kind of the heat of the moment thing you know and a long time let you know like a couple days later and just one of those things well I didn't want it out I didn't want it out just a reminder not to volunteer for anything it was dangerous I felt that when I got out of the Army the first you know they wanted me to re-enlist they asked me to re-enlist and they promised me things and I said you know what Kent you've been very very lucky let's not cheap you know let's not cheat death again or try it because I knew if I stayed in the army I was gonna be back in Vietnam some people stayed there intentionally for years some people liked it too much and I didn't want to get to that point where I liked it when you were in Vietnam how did you stay in touch with your family by letters no not as good as I should have been but they weren't either you know my mother would write me maybe once a month something like that and then I'd write them with some time in fact I still have a bunch of the letters so the woman down the street Florence I used to write to them because her daughter Karen was my age and her son Ken he kind of looked up to me and Florence had been in the Army in World War til she was a whack so we used to you know communicate quite often I tell him about what I'd seen over there and how beautiful it was and sometimes I tell her it wasn't so beautiful and you know things it would happen but and she kept all those letters for me and she came to me when I came home where she came out yep my food was pretty good we had a mess all we had three meals a day and most of the food was cooked by Vietnamese nationals that were hired you know they had an army mess to her washing over but we had good food we had very good food actually same thing in the name we had a lot of good food and again I had a hot shower in Danang I had a flush toilet in Danang which we didn't have in the other place because Danann you're right on the beach so the air base was there we had a bar you know to our club same things a bar and we had a theater where they had movies not in baby - no baby - it downtown had a Vietnamese theater you know I never go in there but I don't understand it maybe the thesis of watch all these romantic things that they were very very robust I don't know sentimental Romanichal that's not a word but that's the kind of stuff they liked no musicals and love stories and things like that they were very much like that nice they were nice did you ever have shortages of any supplies or ammunition no no we were never short on anything we had overages of it how did you cope with the stress of your job being better especially in the name a bunch of us would you know get the other kiss during the heated moment you just do you can do two gotta do and afterwards we would get together and you know we talked about it me we'd have a few beers and you know de-stress that way a couple of times we actually there's a beach there China Beach and a couple times we had a day off we went to the beach we weren't encouraged to go downtown in Danang it was a very scary place to go to because we knew the Vietcong had pretty much infiltrated it and so you couldn't go downtown and mix with the locals so you spend most of time with your friend you know played cards if there was a movie for the movie if there was a USO show which was rare for us from about 2 miles out Bob Hope and from about 2 miles away we were flying cover for we had to fly off so you died on the ground not even on the ground just flying cover for it did you do anything special for good luck I thought I had enough good karma built up you know it sounds like you've worked pretty much every day but in the days that you were not working what you do for entertainment I read nothing I'd like to read listen to music a lot of people that take players you know the big tape decks and they'd be playing they had some pretty fancy ones so because everything was cheap over there you know I don't know what the army was trying to do but the liquor was cheap tape was cheap camera stuff was cheap you know they give you your money and then he wanted to take it away from you through the PX system I did have leave and I got to go on R&R I went with my friend rich and we went to Taiwan that was like welcome back to the world only not really because we we checked into a hotel and first thing you do you know you take a nice hot shower and then you got a bike we had to get some civilian clothes and we met a couple girls that were gonna guide us around the town and stuff like that and I went I went to a zoo I went a lake rolling on a lake I met this girl's family and we went out to dinner things like it was like almost like being back in the world so I had a very good time very good time one week he's very tough to go back the war after being you know how real people didn't have to look over your shoulder all the time and see you know if something was gonna shoot at your stuff like that that was hard to do was that the only art that's the only urban area now I know we talked off-camera before you your brother was also in Vietnam and I don't even work from the same unit but you were able to see him at one point yes my brother was with 196th Light Infantry Brigade and they were located down and attained and which was down near Saigon when I was in Bambi tuit when I got up to de neige his unit was moved up to a place called Chu Lai which was you know like 60 70 miles away from us our friend in Connecticut Florence told me where he was and I was able to get in touch with him and he was able to get a couple days off so he actually hooked onto a helicopter ride and he came up to visit for a couple days so he wanted to go flying with me on a mission and commander said absolutely no way are you going out the helicopter with your brother so he actually gave me a day off my brother I you know kind of caught up on things and stuff like that well there was two crew chiefs with us the Fischbach brothers Joe and Jay to draft in California they were brothers they were in our unit and they were in the same platoon they'd come together name and they were mechanics and they were with me and sometimes I fly with Joe and sometimes I fly with Jay but the couple of crazy California guys they're really nice guys but it was very it was two brothers what was your brother my brothers Larry Joe and Joe and Jay yeah I got a picture of the four of us together and friends front of our hooch that was different working with them I'm surprised I don't know how they did but they did what was your opinion of the officers there is good there was you know not so good for the most part I dealt with pilots okay and pile us a little bit more laid back and they have to be because their life depends on us you know especially I'm the guy in the backseat with a gun and huh and their back is turned to me but more importantly you know for their safety and security they're very dependent on me and it very dependent on the crew chief to make sure that all the copter is in good shape you know and they're flying so they're they're more respectful than some of the other officers that have run across for the most part they were pretty level-headed some of the pilots were that very very fantastic pilots I mean and a couple of more officers that we had it's like they were built into the helicopter I mean think they could do anything I was really happy with with most of you officers it was a mixed bag the guys there was the guys I was with we're good guys you know and mostly just wanted to get through you know do their time and move on it was very few of the people that were there that wanted to stay in Vietnam forever very few of them they were there to save the world from communism they're there to making sure that they're they made it home alive and their buddy made all my life so no matter what your ideology was when you got there your ideology became staying alive and making sure your buddy stay alive now I met a few people that wanted to stay there they liked it okay and one of them was one like the two sergeants and when he got transferred up to us he had already been there for two years this is a 1967 he'd been there for two years he extended he was a bachelor and every year in the army got 30 days li well if you extend it for six months in Vietnam they gave you an extra 30 days leave and they would fly you anywhere you wanted in the world and back so he would extend for six months he got a 30-day leave he'd fly to Hawaii or someplace like that and then he fly back and he'd do it all over again in another six months now he played cards and I didn't play cards with him because I'm not that good at it but I know when he played he won and everything you made over there was tax-free so he'd been in the Army for a long time and he was gonna build up this this - what you did and he was not only so sorry but he wanted to be put on flight status which he somehow wriggled out so he'd get extra money so he stayed there he was there when I left and another guy was his name was Campbell I don't remember what his first name was but he liked killin so he was in the hundred first and they're gonna rotate him back they transferred him up to us instead of leaving them with his unit because apparently he was a little too reckless for his unit so they sent us and they carry well what harm can he do but he stayed there I don't know how long you stay there so some people like that like shooting people just just for the newsletter from the unit you know the Association from the the blackcats black cancer the alley cats head yes yes no I just associated myself from a lot of those people when I got home to Connecticut that was it I had no clothes no uniforms no you know people said they brought on the uniform I had nothing the only thing I had was a tiger fatigues that I'd saved because I I really thought those are nice never fitted them again but everything else got rid of it got rid of everything oh man my survival knife but everything else was gone I didn't want nothing doing into one no memories and my wife was just as happy because I met her about a year after I came home and she didn't want to be doing a lot of things because we go out at night and I I had real trouble you know not to one of these things so I had some bad bad nightmares and I didn't want to take a shot at it and I was afraid that going to the reunion might drag up some there's some good memories don't get me wrong but I was afraid might bring up you know some some bad things I didn't want to remember you know when mr. Easley got killed or or when pop Rago get killed I didn't want to talk about those things you know I wasn't ready for it did you suffer from PTSD yes no you don't do those things men don't do those things we did I treated myself when you flew out of Vietnam and you came back to the United States yes I was good I was done within 24 hours as soon as I hit Fort Lewis Washington 24 hours later I was severely yes we flew in there we got there late in the afternoon was early evening we got in there seven o'clock the next morning I was on a plane up see how their ammonia slam bam thank you ma'am you're out that's it it's all good I just wanted it all behind me and I said now I can get on with my life I don't have to worry about being drafted what was your welcome home life my family was very nice you know welcomed home to me watching what was going on TV was was tough you know some of the protests were starting then I felt that people didn't understand what was going on over there because of course I knew what was going on over there not really I was not aware of what was going on in the world how had the World Bank here in the United States changed so she left there did you see a big change I didn't I didn't see him big change you know my family was very supportive of me and where his Vietnam was not the real hot topic when I first gone away it became the most important thing to everybody at that time was on their mind and I didn't think that they understood what was happening over there so I got in some very heated discussions with a few people about it what did you do in the days immediately after returning well at first I did nothing for a couple days and then I said well you got to get a job so I went out looking for a job and I found one and I worked in a paper mill there was a company called Lionel unfolds so I went down there looking for job and they say oh yeah we got a great job here well it wasn't a great job no my wife saw I was working there and they took newspaper and they recycled okay and they make fiberboard with it and my job was i sat and that this slush that we've gone by and I turn the health of the left to their right and on how high the slush of us this was supposed to be a skilled job and it changed shifts I'd worked third shift and the next week second shift and first shift and then kept rotating back and forth and I did this for almost three months I said I can't do this anymore so I went there blase I'm giving you my two weeks notice because I'm not I'm not gonna do this nascent you're so good at your job I said a monkey can do this job but so I left

Channel: ccsuvhp

Views: 22,797

Rating: 4.7058825 out of 5

Keywords: Vietnam Veteran (Profession), Central Connecticut State University (Organization), Interview, Veterans History Project Of The Library Of Congress American Folklife Center, United States Army (Armed Force), Veteran (Profession), Vietnam War (Event)

Id: VLlCFlM4wWM

Length: 75min 11sec (4511 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 05 2013